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Twitter unveils Snapchat-like stickers to add to photos

Twitter has unveiled emoji stickers, allowing anyone who posts a picture via the mobile app to tack on cartoonish images.

Twitter: introducing a new fun feature in searchable stickers

Twitter will be rolling the function out to its Android and iOS apps in the next couple of weeks, allowing anyone who uploads, for example, a selfie to then add a fake moustache.

In an interesting twist, the stickers are searchable. Tapping the sticker on a photo will take the user into a search showing how others have used that same sticker on their images.

Twitter has described this as a "visual spin" on the hashtag, and it opens up yet another tactical way for brands to target users by interest. The platform recently introduced targeting ads by emoji use, meaning a pizza brand could target based on location, and a user tweeting the pizza emoji.

The new feature is one of Twitter's more light-hearted updates, after the company made functional tweaks such as introducing its algorithmic timeline and tweaked its 140-character word count to no longer count URLs and images. It's possible the company is trying to recast itself as a more 'fun' service, particularly as Snapchat gains greater traction with younger social media users and adland.